2005 Edited With Eleanor Conlin Casella

KI205-02 KI205/Casella & Symonds October 13, 2004 14:54 Char Count= 0
2
Experiencing Industry
Beyond Machines and The
History of Technology
James Symonds
INTRODUCTION
If Marx were alive today, he might well muse that a spectre is haunting
Europe, the spectre of industrial archaeology. How delicious it might
seem to him that the modern-day bourgeoisie is earnestly engaged in an
activity that maps the decline and failure of its own capitalist forebears,
and moreover seeks to preserve individual monuments, and even whole
landscapes, in homage to the generations of workers that struggled to
create the modern world.
In the British Isles, the self-styled former “workshop of the world,”
industrial archaeologists routinely pick over the remains of the indus-
trial past. It has been estimated that some 70% of our built environment
dates from the period of the industrial revolution (Cossons, 1987:12,
cited in Clark, this volume)1 and Britain’s role as the birthplace of the
industrial revolution has been recognised as its unique contribution to
World Heritage (see Cooper, this volume)2 .
However, an appreciation of the significance of industrial re-
mains has sometimes been hindered by their overwhelming presence
and familiarity (Tarlow and West, 1999). The long history of human
James Symonds • ARCUS, Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield,

Sheffield S1 4DT, United Kingdom
1
Clark, K., in press, From Valves to Values: Industrial Archaeology and Heritage Prac-
tice. Industrial Archaeology: Future Directions, edited by E. C. Casella and J. Symonds.
Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York.
2
Cooper. M., in press, Exploring Mrs Gaskell’s Legacy: competing constructions of the
industrial historic environment in England’s north west. In Industrial Archaeology:
Future Directions, edited by E. C. Casella and J. Symonds. Kluwer Academic/Plenum
Publishers, New York.
33
34 James Symonds
Figure 1. ARCUS archaeologists excavating the former Leadmill in Sheffield, 2001

c ARCUS.

settlement in these islands has meant that there is an embarrassment

Au: Please of possible pasts to choose from. There can be no doubt that even though
provide the the interests of archaeologists have now broadened to include all peri-
citation of ods, including the recent and contemporary pasts (see Buchli and Lu-
Fig. 1, Fig. 2,
& Fig. 3 in
cas, 2001) the popular imagination is still fired by the archaeological
text. remains of the early civilisations of the Mediterranean and Near East.
In Britain, when we require a past to serve as a convenient back-drop
to the present, we are far more likely to choose a mystical time of pre-
historic stone circles, with imagined links to ancient celtic religions, or
the disciplined practicality of Roman legionaries, with their perfectly
constructed roads, than the mundane world of an 18th century hand-
loom weaver, or the brutal day-to-day grind of the 19th century railway
navvy.
Of course it may be that the majority of industrial remains are sim-
ply not old enough to be considered truly archaeological by most peo-
ple. As recognisable features of the modern world (albeit early modern
2. Experiencing Industry 35
Figure 2. Crucible furnace men from Jessops’ Brightside Steel Works, Sheffield. c. 1911.
Figure 3. Men teeming crucible steel at Jessops’ Brightside Steel Works, Sheffield.
c. 1911.
36 James Symonds
in many cases) they may even be regarded as being in a sense, after

history, i.e., belonging to a slightly earlier version of us, just beyond
living memory, rather than to a pre-modern period of historical others.
The popularity of Victorian Christmas Markets at industrial heritage
museums perhaps derives from the fact that the period is perceived as
being a less complicated version of the present day, with boiled sweets,
fruitcakes, steam-power, and wholesome family values. As a period of
transition, the industrial period sits uneasily between the past and
present, linking the two, and yet at the same time also transforming
both.
In 1951 the Festival of Britain portrayed the pageant of the past
(the industrial revolution included) as a prelude to the achievements
of the present age. Today the past is more likely seen as an alternative
to the present, a “foreign country” (Samuels, 1994:221). This does not
mean that the past is an unknown territory, but rather, that like any
tourist destination some locations are favoured over others. The mo-
tivation for doing archaeology is often cited as a desire to “find out”.
The wealth of sources available to industrial archaeologists, which can
include detailed contemporary accounts and plans, and in some cases
even photographs of things in use, has led to the common criticism that
industrial archaeology is just an expensive way of finding out what we
already know. This argument can of course be easily countered by point-
ing out that the range and richness of sources that are available to us
allow far more opportunities for analysis and interpretation than would
otherwise be possible (Leone and Potter, 1988:372–373).
The upsurge of interest in 19th century history that has occurred
in Britain since 2000 has, nevertheless, stimulated a new fascination
with the ingenuity and engineering achievements of the Victorian age.
It would seem that the turn of the millennium has served as a point of
closure on the events of the 20th century, and that the 19th century, or
the century before last, as it has become, is now at a suitable temporal
distance from the present to be worthy of serious study.
In this chapter I will explore some possible future directions for in-
dustrial archaeology. Although some would argue that the term “Indus-
trial Archaeology” is now obsolete, and therefore should not have “future
directions” (Cranstone, this volume)3 . I would counter this suggestion
by making two points. First, the term “Industrial Archaeology”, is well
3
Cranstone, D., in press, After Industrial Archaeology. In Industrial Archaeology: Fu-
ture Directions, edited by E. C. Casella and J. Symonds. Kluwer Academic/Plenum
Publishers, New York.
established, and should not be lightly dismissed, even though, as in

other fields of archaeology, such as Palaeolithic or classical archae-
ology, the thrust of research has changed beyond recognition in the
last 50 years. Second, my co-editor and I are aware that “industrial
archaeology”, although changed, still lags behind in terms of archae-
ological theory. We therefore consciously chose to maintain this term
in the belief that those that call themselves “industrial archaeologists”
will find this volume of interest and benefit from the new approaches
and theoretical insights that are presented by the various international
contributors.
My basic point is a simple one, and to some extent a fairly hack-
neyed one for archaeology. We should spend more time thinking about
people, and less time cataloguing things. Robin Skeates’ recent book
Debating the Archaeological Heritage rightly concluded, in my opin-
ion, that what people want from archaeologists is new stories (Skeates,
2000:122). Human actions have a central role to play in the structur-
ing of narratives. We should therefore not loose sight of the people be-
hind the processes that we are attempting to study. To paraphrase E. P.
Thompson, it is our task to rescue these individuals from the “enormous
condescension” of posterity.
THE CRAFT OF INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY
The term “industrial archaeology” first appeared in print in Britain

almost 50 years ago. However, since Michael Rix, a Birmingham Uni-
versity extra-mural tutor, coined the phrase (Rix, 1955) its meaning
and scope have changed significantly. The growth of British industrial
archaeology has been comprehensively described in two recent publi-
cations, and need not detain us here (Palmer and Neaverson, 1998;
Cossons, 2000). It may, nevertheless, be helpful to outline in brief how
industrial archaeology has traditionally been conducted, before going
on to outline some possible ways forward.
More often than not the rationale for doing industrial archaeol-
ogy has had a hint of triumphalism about it, similar to that which was
seen at the Festival of Britain. Studies invariably overlooked (or sim-
ply failed to see) the fact that in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the
industrial revolution was taking place, British imperialism was sys-
tematically stripping the colonies of settlement of valuable raw materi-
als, thereby impeding their indigenous development. The introductory
38 James Symonds
remarks to Industrial Archaeology in Britain, by R. A. Buchanan doubt-

less reflect the prevailing popular opinion of the time:
[Industrial archaeology] . . . is concerned with that common heritage of the

people of Britain, their shared past, and in particular with the outstanding
national achievement of the last two centuries. The gist of this achievement
may be summed up as success in maintaining a rising standard of living for
an ever-increasing population: it is the achievement of higher productivity
which has resulted in the comparative affluence of Western societies in the
twentieth century. (Buchanan, 1974:19).
How, one might ask, has this view been reflected in the types of
fieldwork that have been undertaken, and the published output of re-
searchers? Until comparatively recently most industrial archaeologists
were content to simply describe the physical remains of former indus-
tries, establishing technological functions and detailed chronologies,
but rarely relating their material evidence to the wider social relations
of production (Palmer and Neaverson, 1998:3).
This is perhaps understandable, given the origins of industrial ar-
chaeology as an amateur past time, stimulated by extra-mural classes
and special interest groups, and yet nonetheless on the periphery of
the academic world. Buchanan has recently described how industrial
archaeology in the early 1960s was polarised between a strong volun-
tary lobby that actively campaigned for the conservation of industrial
monuments, and a far weaker official contribution from the academic
establishment (Buchanan, 2000:21). There can be no doubt that it was
the former group, of enthusiastic amateurs, that made the first steps
towards the preservation of the industrial heritage, and encouraged the
discipline of industrial archaeology to grow. As Raphael Samuels has
observed:
It was not the economic historians but the steam fanatics—and after them
the industrial archaeologists—who resuscitated the crumbling walls and
rusting ironwork of eighteenth century furnaces and kilns; who kept alive,
or revivified a sense of wonder at the miracles of invention which made
mid-Victorian Britain the workshop of the world; and who treasured those
cyclopean machines and clanking monsters that dieselization or electrifica-
tion consigned to the scrap heap. (Samuels, 1994:276).
Of course, a movement that was above all motivated by the practical

concerns of conservation could not resist the challenge to locate the ear-
liest or most complete examples of particular processes or sites for pro-
tection (Palmer and Neaverson, 1998:3). With the benefit of hindsight
it can be seen that this quest for origins and the authentic, which was
also a feature of British 20th century folklore and folklife studies, placed
undue emphasis upon the individual monument. The desire to create

physical monuments to commemorate the achievements of the indus-
trial revolution had much in common with the emotive process through
which religious shrines had been created in earlier centuries. This can
be most readily seen in Coalbrookdale, where Abraham Darby’s coke-
fired blast furnace was restored in 1959, and continues to provide a
tangible link to the miraculous discoveries of early-18th century iron-
working (Buchanan, 2000:24).
The mid-20th century emphasis upon preserving individual mon-
uments ensured that many iconic features were saved from destruc-
tion. However, on occasion this object-fixation failed to grasp the wider
scheme of things. It is interesting to note that despite more than
50 years of study, and the publication of a multitude of local and re-
gional studies (see Buchanan, 2000:34) no comprehensive and up-to-
date archaeological synthesis of the “big picture” has been attempted
since the pioneering work of Buchanan, and Cossons (Buchanan, 1972;
Cossons, 1975). Although several overviews of the industrial revolution
have been published, these are for the most part the work of economic
historians, and generally ignore the evidence of industrial archaeology.
This situation is likely to change. In the last 20 years industrial
archaeology has benefited greatly from improvements in recording and
presentation. It has also gained more widespread recognition through
its informed contribution to the conservation-led regeneration of urban
areas, and to the advancement of integrated landscape management
plans (Falconer, 2000:77).
Industrial archaeologists have also started to consider more fully
what Marilyn Palmer, quoting Collingwood, terms the “inside of the
event” (Palmer, this volume)4 . A better appreciation of the experience
of work and the nature of industrial workplaces is now being gained in a
variety of ways. Firstly, a number of thematic studies have appeared of
the buildings that housed former industries, e.g. the Birmingham Jew-
ellery Quarter, the Sheffield metals trades, (Cattell and Hawkins, 2000,
2002; Wray et al., 2001). Secondly, in recognition of the fact that indus-
trial processes are driven by people, state agencies have also placed
more effort into recording existing industries at work, especially those
that are about to undergo structural change. Thus impressive photo-
graph surveys were undertaken of Arrol’s Works, a structural steel con-
tractors work, near Glasgow, prior to closure in 1987, and Hunterston, a
4
Palmer, M., in press, Industrial Archaeology: Constructing a Framework of Inference.
In Industrial Archaeology: Future Directions, edited by E. C. Casella and J. Symonds.
Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York.
40 James Symonds
nuclear power station in Ayrshire, prior to decommissioning (Falconer,

2000:76).
This kind of active “process recording”, developed by Brian Mallaws
(Mallaws, 1997) and modified by Anna Badcock to take into account the
active role of people in the performance of processes (Badcock, 2004)
takes industrial archaeology to a new level of social relevance. Rather
than lingering over the decaying remains of past industrial achieve-
ments, industrial archaeologists are now charged with the responsibil-
ity of objectively recording the performance of contemporary working
practises. The unique ability to record and comment upon the moment
of transformation, which in some cases can mean witnessing the end of
practices that have endured for generations, places industrial archae-
ology at the heart of contemporary culture. Indeed, one might argue
that the labour of industrial archaeology is now required before major
social and economic change can be fully effected.
To return to my opening allusion of Karl Marx chuckling through
his beard, industrial archaeologists are now very much part of the in-
dustrial process which they study. This of course raises a whole new set
of epistemological problems that are familiar to anthropologists and
sociologists, and relate to the role of the ethnographer, and the use of
surveillance as a tool for coercion and social control. It is perhaps only
a matter of time before CCTV footage and transcripts of e-mails are
suggested as suitable materials for inclusion in project archives.
WRITING THE REVOLUTION
I have described how industrial archaeology has its origins among

the volunteer conservationists of the 1950s and ‘60s. This begs the ques-
tion why such individuals were motivated to give up their free time
in order to save traces of the industrial past. At one level it is clear
that the 1950s and ‘60s were a time of uncertainty and post-war WWII
modernisation. Agriculture became mechanised, railways became ra-
tionalised and electrified, and the growth of car ownership led to a ma-
jor programme of road-building. All of these factors contributed to the
feeling that “heritage was in danger” and encouraged the growth of lo-
cal amenity societies and protest groups (Samuels, 1994:242–247). But
why should anyone feel the need to physically save the industrial past,
as opposed to any other past? To answer this question we need to take
a step back to consider the historiography of the industrial revolution
in Britain.
Although the term “industrial revolution” had been in use in

England since the 1840s, it did not enter into the vocabulary of his-
torians until 1884, when the lectures of the Oxford don Arnold Toynbee
were published (Hudson, 1992:11). Toynbee viewed industrialisation
and the rise of free market economics as an inherently bad thing. In
his opinion the industrial revolution was linked to a short period of in-
tensive technical innovation that commenced c.1760 with the invention
of the rotary steam engine, and was essentially completed by 1850. In
this period the old order of medieval regulation was “suddenly broken
in pieces by the mighty blows of the steam engine and the power loom”
(Toynbee, 1884, cited in Hudson 1992:11).
Toynbee’s view was no doubt coloured by the work of a range of early
Victorian writers, such as Dickens, Carlyle, Mrs Gaskell and Engels,
who had commented upon the “condition of England” between the 1830s
and 1850s. Dickens’ description of “Coketown” in Hard Times (1854) is
still taken by many to epitomise the horrors of industrialisation, with
an oppressed industrial workforce struggling to survive in squalid and
overcrowded urban conditions. Other prominent Victorian intellectu-
als promoted the idea that the nineteenth century was the crucible of
modernity, a turning point between the old world and the new. Thomas
Arnold, for example, regarded the sight of the first train passing Rugby
as marking the end of feudalism, and William Cobbett thought that
important social ties had been severed by the act of parliamentary en-
closure (Price, 1999:4).
In contrast to this interpretation of change as an inherently bad
thing, much of the thinking that has underpinned approaches to in-
dustrial heritage in Britain has been based upon a Whig interpreta-
tion of history. By this I mean that there has been a tendency to view
technological changes as being linear and progressive. This positivist
or modernist conception of history in which progress is seen as an in-
evitable consequence of the growth of the material forces of the state,
was first conceptualised in the 1890s, by the historian J. R. Seeley (Price,
1996:221).
During the 20th century economic historians advanced several mod-
els to explain the industrial revolution. Industrial change was seen as
being revolutionary, then evolutionary, then cyclical, as each genera-
tion reassessed the interpretations of the generation before (Coleman,
1992). Arguments centred upon such issues as the role of demography,
the stages of economic growth, the nature and timing of technological
innovation, the influence of capital formation, and the standard of living
of the working classes (see Hudson, 1992:14–34).
42 James Symonds
The arguments between historians over the proper use of statis-

tics, and the most suitable measures of industrial growth although at
times heated, and often protracted, had little impact upon the work
of industrial archaeologists, who laboured on regardless, and felt lit-
tle need to draw upon theoretical developments in either history or
archaeology.
I have argued elsewhere that there are two versions of the indus-
trial revolution in common currency (Symonds, 2003). On the one hand
there is a scholarly version, which currently favours a gradualist expla-
nation for change. On the other hand, there is the version of sudden and
dramatic change, which still prevails in the popular imagination. The
second of these explanations is sustained by the belief that there was a
clustering of inventions in the generation that followed 1760, and that
this remarkable outpouring of ingenuity sparked unprecedented eco-
nomic development. Herein, I believe, lies much of the fascination with
the industrial revolution, the idea that a special and quintessentially
British genius was at work in this period that helped to define national
identity, but which has rarely been seen since. Christine MacLeod has
provided a useful de-construction of the representation of James Watt
in this pantheon of heroic inventors (MacLeod, 1998).
These reservations aside, the term “industrial revolution” is likely
to remain in widespread use as a way of describing the period of Britain’s
early industrial growth. The term has arguably become indispensable in
that it encapsulates the sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet, memories
of an earlier stage of collective development. In the words of Maxine
Berg:
The industrial revolution has been conceived of as a period of transition,

however long the period and varied its characteristics. It is part of the “life
story” of the nation, conceived generally as its formative childhood and ado-
lescence. (Berg, 1994:13).
BEYOND MACHINES AND THE

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY
Can industrial archaeology move beyond its traditional fixation

with monument-centred technologies and conservation to become a
fully-fledged archaeology of industrial society? In order to achieve this
aim our work must become more relevant, indeed I would argue cen-
tral, to the historical understanding of the period. Crossing the disci-
plinary divide may not be as difficult as some might fear. Maxine Berg’s
Age of Manufactures highlights the following features of the period

1780–1820:
1. Industrial growth was sustained over the whole of the eigh-
teenth century, not just after 1775.
2. Technical change started early and was widespread. Change was
not simply to do with mechanization, and was “above all a con-
juncture of old and new processes.”
3. Industrialisation was about the re-organisation and decentral-
isation of work. Extended workshops and sweated labour were
important new departures in production.
4. Technical and industrial change had a variable impact upon the
division of labour, skills, and employment in different regions
(Berg, 1994:281)
Many of these aspects of early industrial society had material ex-
pressions and can be investigated using archaeological techniques. The
question inevitably arises, however, what can archaeology add to con-
ventional historical interpretations? Although it should be clear that
our interpretations must be based upon material evidence, we must be
careful to avoid what Grace Karskens has termed “history with a bone
thrown in” i.e. a straight retelling of history from documentary sources,
with a few artefacts added to spice things up (Karksens, in press).
THE EXPERIENCE OF INDUSTRY
How can we hope to touch upon the lives of those who experienced
the social upheavals associated with industrialisation? In this section
I offer some preliminary thoughts on possible future research areas for
the social archaeology of industrialisation.
Apart from widespread technical and organisational advances, the
industrial age had two major discontinuities that distinguished if from
preceding periods. The first of these was a huge increase in population.
The population of England and Wales trebled in the four generations
from 1751 to 1861, rising from c. 6.5 million to 20.1 million. Second,
the rise of industrial society went hand-in-hand with the rapid expan-
sion of towns and cities, as workers were drawn to urban centres from
surrounding rural areas by new opportunities for employment.
This demographic growth had a distinctly regional dimension.
While London, with one million inhabitants, remained the largest city
in Europe, and by far the largest in Britain, proportionately more
44 James Symonds
growth occurred in the towns of the English north and midlands

(Prest, 1988:271). Thus Manchester and Liverpool displaced Bristol and
Norwich as the country’s second and third largest towns. Birmingham,
Leeds and Sheffield also grew appreciably. In 1801 there were just
15 towns in England and Wales with over 20,000 inhabitants. By 1851
this number had risen to 63 (Prest, 1988:272).
The massing of the population in manufacturing towns and cities
is a critically important feature of the industrial revolution, and should
be central to any analysis of the period. Many of these new towns and
cities shared similar physical characteristics, in the form of factories,
towering smokestacks, canals, railways, and densely packed back-to
back housing. However, the rapid growth, and differences in the types
of manufacturing activity that were being carried out in different re-
gions also ensured a measure of diversity. The architecture of the new
industrial towns both influenced, but at same time reflected their wider
hinterlands. This brings me to my first suggested area for investigation
by industrial archaeologists, the contribution that industries have made
to the shaping of local and regional identities.
REGIONAL INDUSTRIES AND

LOCAL DISTINCTIVENESS
The morning after our arrival we were startled out of our sleep by an im-
mense rattle along the cobbled street, as though a regiment of cavalry had
been suddenly let loose on the town. . . . Hundreds of men and women, lads
and girls, were hurrying to the mills. All wore clogs on their feet and it was
just the click of iron-shod clogs on pavement that produced the din. The
noise died down . . . and then began the hum of machinery, and the rattle of
looms, which went on for the rest of the day. (James and Hills, 1937, cited
in Girouard, 1990:247).
The pre-modern economy was based upon highly distinctive re-

gional industries, such as that witnessed by Mrs Mary Brown in 1897
(above), in the Lancashire cotton-spinning town of Burnley. These in-
dustries had a specific geographical location, and lacked the overall
national integration of 20th century industrial production. Mrs Brown
would have witnessed a quite different scene had she lodged beside the
workshop of a “little mester,” producing cutlery in a Sheffield backstreet,
or beside the smoking cones of a Burslem pottery.
The industrial revolution should be viewed as the transformation
of several distinct regional economies (Price, 1990:46). The timing and
extent of the onset of industrial specialisation varied greatly between
one region and another, and some regions, such as the north east of
England, witnessed several shifts in regional specialisation. The most
frequently cited examples of specialised economic regions in England
include:
r Southern Lancashire, parts of Derbyshire, and Cheshire (cotton)
r West Riding of Yorkshire (wool)
r Shropshire (iron)
r Staffordshire Potteries (ceramics)
r Birmingham and Warwickshire (metalworking)
r Tyneside (coal, iron, salt, glass)
r Cornwall (copper, tin-mining and smelting) (from Prest, 1988:
270).
A great deal of effort was made by landowners and industrialists
in the second half of the 18th century to overcome the natural barriers
to trade and communication that separated these regions. By the first
quarter of the 19th century the construction of 20,000 miles of turn-
pikes road, 2,125 miles of navigable river, 2000 miles of canal, and
c. 1,500 miles of horse-drawn railway had enabled a national market,
that incorporated the products of these diverse regions, to be envisaged
for the first time (Prest, 1998:245–246).
Was the impetus for industrial growth a local, or a nationally driven
phenomenon? At one level it was undoubtedly local. The early economic
development of a region depended to a large extent upon the influence
of individuals and upon highly localised factors, such as the availability
of natural resources, or the creation of an efficient transport infrastruc-
ture. A convincing argument has been made that the change from a
domestic to a factory system of production in the woollen industry of
the West Riding of Yorkshire that occurred between c. 1780 and c. 1840
was an essentially local transition (Gregory, 1982:2). Economic devel-
opment and growth in Gloucestershire in the period 1500 and 1800
was similarly locally driven (Rollison, 1992:1–18). So how can develop-
ments on a national scale be explained? It has been skilfully argued that
it was the “reverberation of new ideas” within such bounded but inter-
connected regions that provided the dynamism for national industrial
growth in an otherwise “mostly unreceptive island” (Pollard, 1981:19).
The economic region would, therefore, seem to be an appropriate
subject for investigation by industrial archaeologists. Only by compar-
ing and contrasting regional differences in industrial structures and
remains, both above and below ground, can the complex interplay of
economic and social factors that shaped British industrial growth be
truly revealed. At a basic level the simple question might be posed, how
46 James Symonds
did the economic development of a particular region differ from that of

its more or less economically developed neighbours? If a region shows
evidence of retarded industrial development, what factors inhibited its
growth?
Economic historians have debated long and hard over whether
technological innovations are to be explained in terms of exogenous
or endogenous factors; yet despite their attempts to explain innovation
as a normal feature of economic growth, their interpretations are often
unconvincing, and are “certainly not conceptually rich enough to under-
stand either the springs of invention or the complexity of the processes
of innovation and diffusion” (Berg and Bruland, 1998:4). Industrial ar-
chaeology has the ability to throw new light upon such issues, and can
bring new evidence to the debate.
As important, if not more so, than this last point, is the contri-
bution that can be made by local and regional industrial histories to a
modern-day sense of place and local distinctiveness. Many of the former
industrial regions that have been identified above are once again un-
dergoing transformation as part of 21st century regeneration schemes.
Under these circumstances industrial archaeology can provide positive
reinforcement to communities in the form of narratives that highlight
the skill and resilience of former populations, as well as addressing such
sensitive issues as social inclusion (see Symonds 1994; and in press).
THE PLACE OF WORK
My second suggested area of study relates to the first, but narrows

in the field of enquiry to examine the experience of the individual work-
place. Technological and industrial change had a variable impact upon
the division of labour, and the growth of skills in each of the distinct
topographical and economic regions. We can therefore expect highly lo-
calised patterns of work and technology to have emerged, a fact that
has been acknowledged by leading economic historians (see Hudson,
1990).
One way that differences in economic organisation and working
practices can be seen is in the architectural form of buildings. The sem-
inal work of Thomas A. Markus has stressed that it is important to view
industrial and other buildings as “social objects” and to move beyond
simple descriptions of building types, e.g. hospital, prison, school, fac-
tory, to view structures as a form of discourse (Markus, 1993). Markus,
acknowledging a debt to Lefebre, Hillier and Hanson, and others, has
advanced the proposition, following King (1980), that “the study of
buildings is one way to understand society and the study of society one
way to understand buildings” (Markus, 1993:26). This approach exposes
the sheer variety of places, which were sometimes purpose built, but
were often merely an extension of the home, where goods were made
and finished. Major differences in the organisation and scale of pro-
duction are also highlighted. We may learn a great deal by studying
buildings such as Josiah Wedgwood’s Etruria pottery factory of 1769,
with its spatial flow of production that transformed raw materials into
finished goods in a semi-circle that began and ended at the Grand Trunk
Canal, or the humble lean-to sheds of Cradley Heath, where the wives
of Black Country miners hand- forged chains.
Further insights may be gained into the social aspects of tech-
nology, by examining the role that machines played in the struggle
for control between factory owners and workers. By incorporating the
skills of workers into mechanical devices capitalists were able to con-
trol and regulate production, and thereby remove their reliance upon
skilled individuals (Lubar, 1993:200). In the woollen industry of the
West Riding of Yorkshire, the mechanisation of working practices re-
duced skilled and semi-autonomous artisans to casual wage-labourers.
The knock-on effect of this change was the deskilling and routinization
of work, increased gendered divisions of labour, chronic unemployment,
and the imposition of harsh systems of work-discipline upon all (Gre-
gory 1982:21).
Was the de-skilling of the workforce an inevitable consequence of
the industrial revolution? We have already seen that in many cases it
was the organisation of work that changed as a result of industriali-
sation, but how did innovation occur? And how were traditional craft
skills maintained, safeguarded, or transmitted between members of a
community or workforce?
INNOVATION AND THE RETENTION

AND TRANSMISSION OF SKILLS
Technology, is, after all, not a thing, but a culture. (Berg and Bruland,
1998:14)
The commonly accepted evolutionary succession of major British

industries since the 18th century runs as follows: cotton to coal, to
steel, to engineering and shipbuilding, to motor vehicles, to electri-
cal goods, to pharmaceutical and petro-chemical products. (Lloyd-Jones
and Lewis, 1998). The simple logic of this scheme has sometimes had
48 James Symonds
the unfortunate effect of discouraging industrial archaeologists from

investigating less visible, but no less significant industries. It has also
obscured the process of technological change by implying that innova-
tion was necessarily linear and always homegrown within the British
Isles. The peculiar inventive genius of the British, as suggested by many
histories of the industrial revolution, may be questioned in relation to
innovations in a number of industries with European counterparts, in-
cluding Italian glass makers and jewellers, Flemish weavers and pot-
ters, and German, French, and Walloon iron and steel makers.
In the case of iron and steel making, I have already referred to the
event in, 1709, when the Quaker Abraham Darby first smelted iron with
coke at Coalbrookdale, in Shropshire. The use of coal in the form of coke
as a fuel for blast furnaces, in place of the more customary charcoal, is
rightly regarded as a significant advance in the history of metallurgy,
and enabled a massive increase in national production rates to take
place. However, the background to this innovation is rarely discussed.
Little emphasis is placed upon the fact that Darby first became familiar
with the use of coke in malting in the late-17th century, while serving
an apprenticeship to a Birmingham malt mill maker, or even more sig-
nificantly, that he gained experience in using coal, and possibly coke, to
smelt copper, by emulating the working practices of the metalworkers
of Aachen, while working as a member of the Bristol Wire Co., in 1702
(Harris, 1988:31).
A further significant point is that Darby’s innovation was only
widely adopted beyond Coalbrookedale some 40 or 50 years after 1709,
in the 1750s, when a rise in the cost of charcoal forced ironmasters to
reduce their expenditure and thereby turn to coke as an alternative
source of fuel (Hyde, 1977:57). A similar time lag, of at least a gener-
ation, intervened before crucible steel, a refined form of blister steel
developed by Benjamin Huntsman in South Yorkshire in the 1740s,
was widely accepted and used by the cutlers of Sheffield. Inherent con-
servatism was an important factor that impeded the adoption of new
technologies in many sectors of industry, and merits further detailed
investigation by industrial archaeologists.
If technological innovation and industrial growth were limited by
conservatism, and initially by expense, how were new ideas developed
and transmitted? McCloskey, drawing upon approaches from cultural
history, has suggested that close attention needs to be paid to the social
and economic context of innovation, and that “speech communities “—
i.e. “the rhetorical environment that makes it possible for inventors to
be heard” were of critical importance to the advancement of knowledge
(McCloskey 1994:269). On a broad canvas, it may be that the “culture of
disagreement and of debate” that existed in North-West Europe (Berg

and Bruland 1998:15, citing McCloskey 1994) created a suitable envi-
ronment for invention, or indeed that Protestant materialism, and the
practical mechanical aptitude of northern Europeans allowed them to
outpace their technological rivals in the East (see Landes, 1998).
In many industries knowledge was acquired and transmitted
within households, or other close family groupings. In the case of bar
iron making, Evans and Rydén (1998) have shown how skills trans-
mitted through kinship networks operated in quite different ways in
Britain and Sweden. Father and son teams of forgemen were of criti-
cal importance to the charcoal iron industry of pre-19th century Britain,
and frequently moved as a team from site to site, confining their skills to
kin, in order to ensure a good wage for their labour. This practice infuri-
ated many ironmasters, who took the opportunity to adopt coal technol-
ogy as a means to break their reliance upon dynastic iron-working fam-
ilies. In contrast, the Swedish response to the growth in cheap puddled
iron on the British market was to intensify the dynastic basis of high
quality charcoal-fired Swedish bar iron (Evans and Rydén, 1998:204–
205).
Extended kinship networks were not limited to the aristocracy, or
the skilled working classes, and operated to the advantage of individu-
als at every social level, admittedly over varying territorial scales. Im-
portant dynastic families of ironmasters, such as the Foleys or Crowleys
of the West Midlands, or the Spencers of Yorkshire, successfully main-
tained their social position and wealth over several generations, and
controlled the market in iron through the use of a series of close-knit
business partnerships, and cartells (Harris, 1988:66). My point is that
whereas historians have traditionally used the household as a means of
analysis, and anthropologists, kinship, industrial archaeologists have
failed to appreciate the importance of individuals and family networks
to the industries that they study.
THE RISE OF CONSUMERISM
The different trajectories of industrial growth, and the local and

regional variations in industrial practices that have been suggested
above provide a framework for investigation by industrial archaeolo-
gists. However, the questions that may be addressed by this scheme
relate almost exclusively to the archaeology of production. Of equal im-
portance, but far less studied, is the archaeology of consumption. What
happened to the masses of materials and finished items that flooded
50 James Symonds
out of factories, forges, mills, and potteries as a consequence of the in-

tensification of production?
Did manufactured goods enable the emergence of a “triumphant
middle-class,” whose “values (were) imposed through material culture
on the poor,” as has been suggested by the most recent overview of
post-medieval archaeology in Britain (Newman et al., 2001:9)? Or did
the working classes create a self-styled taste of their own (Casella, in
press)? Perhaps the rise of consumerism was fuelled by an increase in
the disposable income of women, who were keen to spend their new
found wages improving their appearance, and that of their home and
family (McKendrick, 1974).
Several scholars in North American, and beyond, have suggested
that historical archaeology should adopt the study of Capitalism and
the rise of consumerism as a focus for their research (Handsman, 1983;
Johnson, 1996; Leone, 1977; Leone and Potter, 1999; Paynter, 1988). In
contrast, far too little attention has been paid to the material evidence
for consumption by industrial archaeologists working in the UK. It is
therefore impossible to evaluate the important recent suggestion that
has been made by Wurst and McGuire, that the correlation between
wealth and the material expression of status is far from linear, and
that, “The issue is not what people buy, but the social relations that
enable and constrain what they buy” (Wurst and McGuire, 1999:196).
FINDING FRANCIS PECK:

SOME CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Solomon Grundy
Born on a Monday
Christened on a Tuesday
Married on a Wednesday
Sick on a Thursday
Worse on a Friday
Died on a Saturday
Buried on a Sunday
And that was the end
Of Solomon Grundy
On a Sunday afternoon in late-September 2000, I travelled with

my partner Victoria to a small village in south Lincolnshire. We stood
for some time in a country churchyard, peering at inscriptions on head-

stones, in search of the grave of her Great-Great Grandfather. As we
turned to leave, frustrated by the undergrowth and the fading light, the
low autumn sunlight clipped the side of the church tower, and magically
lit up the headstone that we had been searching for: “Here lies William
Peck, 5 of his children, and Francis Peck, his son.”
Victoria’s Great-Great Grandfather, Francis Peck, was born to an
undistinguished Lincolnshire agricultural family in 1858. He died from
a seizure at the age of 35 while bringing in the harvest, on a blistering
hot day summer day in 1893. Francis had been born in the midst of
the industrial revolution, and his short life spanned the years in which
the British Empire approached its apogee. From Victoria’s personal
research the following story has been reconstructed.
At the age of 21, Francis was married with a child, and working
as a horseman. He lived, with his wife Annie, and their young child,
in a small room above a barn, two miles from the village where he
had been born. Ten years later, he was living in Nottinghamshire, and
working as a casual labourer in an ironstone quarry. From Census re-
turns, and other official records, it appears that Francis moved to find
employment on several occasions. His six daughters were born in three
different counties, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire.
By comparing the birthplaces of his daughters with the location and
dates of ironstone quarries, it can be seen that Francis had effectively
followed the network of ironstone quarries and interlinking tramways
and railways as they extended north from Grantham to Lincoln.
Francis’ death during the harvest in 1893 is partially remembered
in the collective memory of Victoria’s family, as the sudden death of
a relative that suffered heat stroke, and drank ice-cold water from
a stoneware jug. Francis was buried in the same grave as his father
William, and five of his ten brothers and sisters, who had all died in
their infancy.
The inscription on his gravestone indicated that Francis had died
and been buried within a matter of weeks of his elderly father. We
may envisage Annie, dressed in her black widow’s weeds, and Fran-
cis’s six daughters, gathered in a state of shock over the freshly opened
grave of their Grandfather, for the second time in a month. By 1901
Francis’s widow Annie and her daughters had left the countryside,
and were recorded in the Census as living in the industrialised city of
Nottingham, several miles further north. All seven women now earned
their living as lace factory workers.
What is the point of this story about an ordinary man and his
unfortunate wife? Were it not for Victoria’s interest in genealogy, the
52 James Symonds
little that has been gleaned about Francis and Annie, and the story of
his tragically short life, would have remained untold. Indeed just three
generations after his death, his descendents had forgotten his name,
and were unaware of his Lincolnshire origins. As far as Victoria’s family
were concerned, they had always lived in Nottingham, and their female
ancestors had always worked in the Nottingham lace-making industry.
It is clear that the large-scale migration of individuals and whole
families to urban areas that accompanied industrialisation in Britain
has led to a degree of social amnesia. Very few families in modern cities
know the details of their ancestors’ lives beyond four generations, at
least not without recourse to genealogical research. Individuals and
events fade quickly, and memories of the past only endure because they
are “bound to the present for [their] survival” (Hutton 1993:17). Hence,
the chance survival of a blue and white tureen, or some other heirloom,
may recall the farmhouse kitchen of a distant country cousin. The writ-
ing of history, always partial, and selective, compartmentalises facts to
fit the story in hand. We segment, and then re-order linear time to cre-
ate a credible narrative, “linking the segments along the arc of progress
that leads, inevitably, to us” (Glassie, 1999:7).
Francis Peck is long dead and gone, and cannot be known. Like the
character in the nursery rhyme Solomon Grundy, all that remains of his
life are a few bald facts, assembled from official documents, and the par-
tially remembered story of his premature demise. The rest is conjecture.
Professional historians and industrial archaeologists would approach
the evidence that pertains to his life and work in very different ways.
In some histories Francis would be lost, subsumed within a head-count
of agricultural labourers—or “ag.labs”—that populated the 19th cen-
tury parish. In other histories the peripatetic nature of his employment
might be taken as evidence for the erosion of local agricultural practices
and customary rights to tenure by the rise of agrarian capitalism.
Archaeological studies, employing a more materialistic lens, would
probably not even notice Francis. Some of the ironstone quarries in
which Francis laboured—at least those that appear on the First Edi-
tion Ordnance Survey maps—will have been described and included for
the purposes of cultural resource management in the relevant County
Council Sites and Monuments Records. Local enthusiasts have also
published detailed studies of the quarries, mineral tramways, and
branch railways that supplied the iron-making centres of the English
midlands (see Tonks, 1991). However, Francis and his contemporary
labourers do not figure prominently in such studies, which focus upon
the physical remains of the quarries and their related transportation
systems.
The nuances of working life and the varied social experience of in-
dividuals, even within one family, are lost in any analysis that regards
Francis as an agricultural labourer and quarryman, and his widow and
daughters, as industrial workers. Linda Colley has observed, “Identities
are not like hats. Human beings can put on several at a time.” (Colley,
1994:6). While this phrase neatly expresses the overlapping ways in
which status and gender differences can be played out, we should ac-
knowledge that the repertoire of individual identities changes over the
course of an individual lifetime. This was perhaps never more so than in
the period of the industrial revolution, when new forms of employment
were devised and new types of workplace constructed, leading to the
dislocation of rural communities, and the growth of densely populated
manufacturing towns.
This should not be taken to suggest that those that left the coun-
tryside simply discarded their customary ways, and passively adopted
new ways of behaving, but rather that new “symbolic constructions of
community”—such as the close-knit working class solidarity of northern
mill towns—were made possible by these movements and changes
(Cohen, 1985:21). The major challenge that faces the archaeology of the
industrial period in future years is the need to move beyond the docu-
mentation of machines and the history of technology, to create stories
that highlight the individual and collective social experience of indus-
trial worlds that are now fading, but which still cast a long shadow over
our post-industrial lives.
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KI205-02 KI205/Casella & Symonds October 13, 2004 14:54 Char Count= 0

James Symonds • ARCUS, Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield,

Figure 1. ARCUS archaeologists excavating the former Leadmill in Sheffield, 2001

settlement in these islands has meant that there is an embarrassment

in many cases) they may even be regarded as being in a sense, after

established, and should not be lightly dismissed, even though, as in

THE CRAFT OF INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY

The term “industrial archaeology” first appeared in print in Britain

remarks to Industrial Archaeology in Britain, by R. A. Buchanan doubt-

[Industrial archaeology] . . . is concerned with that common heritage of the

Of course, a movement that was above all motivated by the practical

undue emphasis upon the individual monument. The desire to create

nuclear power station in Ayrshire, prior to decommissioning (Falconer,

WRITING THE REVOLUTION

I have described how industrial archaeology has its origins among

Although the term “industrial revolution” had been in use in

The arguments between historians over the proper use of statis-

The industrial revolution has been conceived of as a period of transition,

BEYOND MACHINES AND THE

Can industrial archaeology move beyond its traditional fixation

Age of Manufactures highlights the following features of the period

THE EXPERIENCE OF INDUSTRY

growth occurred in the towns of the English north and midlands

REGIONAL INDUSTRIES AND

The pre-modern economy was based upon highly distinctive re-

did the economic development of a particular region differ from that of

THE PLACE OF WORK

My second suggested area of study relates to the first, but narrows

INNOVATION AND THE RETENTION

The commonly accepted evolutionary succession of major British

the unfortunate effect of discouraging industrial archaeologists from

disagreement and of debate” that existed in North-West Europe (Berg

THE RISE OF CONSUMERISM

The different trajectories of industrial growth, and the local and

out of factories, forges, mills, and potteries as a consequence of the in-

FINDING FRANCIS PECK:

On a Sunday afternoon in late-September 2000, I travelled with

for some time in a country churchyard, peering at inscriptions on head-

Tarlow, S., and West, S., (eds.)

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